Soon, falling, the end across a blackened horizon, too tired to hold back the clouds, mushroomed to the peak of a fattened darkness; too weak beneath the weight of infinity I waited. Begrudgingly spawned from the womb of cursed nothingness by Darkness – my heavy, calculated presence was something even the gods feared. Fate, Sickness, estranged siblings though I followed behind them for countless millennia, probably longer. Foolishly, they’d always mistaken me as a cosmic scavenger, or beggar swallowing what pitiful star-scraps or flecks of bones that fell from their lips, but it was worse – I was worse. A messenger wrought from the fiery mouths of broken mountains, or a corpse too frail to live, even the last branch of a dead tree to signal the coming plague – I was always there – the inevitable, the impending storm. 

And soon, falling, like fire from the heavens, I was something far worse. The needles beneath the skin which acted as a warning before the fall, or the rush of blood which crashed through brain and bone-barriers like an unyielding force – there was always something before the end, my fingers pressed on the fabric of existence o’er the yawning precipice of Void and Death, too tired to hold back the clouds; too frail to lift the weight of the end; too great to soften the blow by something terrible, something that was even worse than death – me – the end. 

[Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish American multiple award nominated author who writes prose poetry and short stories in cosmic horror and weird fiction with half a decade of writing experience. Five-time Rhysling Award nominee, and two-time Pushcart Award nominee, find him and his work at www.thewellsoftheweird.com. ]